Good morning. Ford Motor today said it will start testing a new way of shaping sheet metal using a software program that guides a robotic arm to bend and shape metal according to specifications programmed into the robot’s processor. The new technology can cut the cost of developing an automotive prototype part by 80% or more and reduce production time from two to six months to as little as three days. “Free form manufacturing is somewhat similar to 3-D printing, because it uses computer technology—software and algorithms—to make each part,” Raj Sohmshetty, a technical expert at Ford Research and Advanced Engineering in Dearborn, Mich., tells CIO Journal. The technology was developed in conjunction with Boeing, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Department of Energy.

Good morning. Oracle on Monday said it would support customers wanting to run Microsoft’s software on its database stack, while Microsoft said it would make Oracle’s version of the Linux operating system available on its Azure cloud platform. The detente in a decades-old rivalry, announced during a joint press conference, means a lot more to customers than what Cowen and Co. analyst Peter Goldmacher calls “two old men talking about the good old days.”

Francesca’s Ex-CFO Gene Morphis has a history of tweeting non-public information about the fashion retailer that stretches back almost to his October 2010 appointment, but it wasn’t until his tweets started moving the company’s stock that he was discovered and quickly fired for cause.

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CIO Journal provides time-pressed CIOs with a definitive destination for the most relevant news and analysis, to help them connect the dots between technology trends and business strategy. Its team of reporters and editors—aided by the resources of Dow Jones and thousands of other premium news sites—focuses on the use of technology as a tool for business growth. Contact our editors with news items, comments and questions at: ciojeditors@wsj.com.